


... And All That Jazz

by flyingskull



Category: Bleach
Genre: Long Drabble, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:56:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4262421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingskull/pseuds/flyingskull
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Music is a razor-sharp two-edged balm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	... And All That Jazz

**Author's Note:**

> Any time after the hundred years backflip and Aizen King of Hollowland.

She wails, muffled-unmuffled, pure tone one minute, all cottony-faraway the next. She cries in pain, screams in joy, yells, sobs, sings in cascading dissonances; she rasps her chaotic emotions, all silk stretched on steel bones, smooth, hairless, hidden and open; young-old, ancient and child, baby baby babe, cruel as the dawn of the world, tender as cream and now all broken in soul-shattering notes.

He listens, rapt for a moment, and knows what it is to be other, not-self, possessed. The silence inside him is deafening.

Then the drums start, deep inside him, relentless and sure; heartbeat, bloodpulse, musclepounding... his whole body is shuddering, juddering with it; twitching, shivering, jerking in time with it, in counterbeat, stealing beats on the bar and accelerating.

He can't breathe.

She gasps, then inhales a huge lungful of air and lets go, clear note soaring beyond high: terror and pain sustained so high so long they sound like ecstasy; a holy virgin knowing her god in her body; beyond life, beyond death to Art Eternal greater than both.

He screams with her, then, captured and held in the purity of that one note, half a tone flat, disrupting the beauty and making it better, alto sax to silver trumpet; imperfect perfection that is completion and desire for more.

The ghost-echo of it fill the air with vibes long after they have fallen silent, the ghost-echo of their rapture quivers in their flesh long after they've fallen still; still breathing hard, but softer with each breath; trembling, quivering, like leaves in autumn lusting for the ground.

Then, at long last, there's silence.

"How was it?" Shinji asks softly, a little unsure.

"Wish you'd stop that stupid dance of yours," Hiyori sulks, "it ruins things."

"Can't help it," he meekly says.

"Can too!" she yells. "You just don't want to. Think it's cool. _Cool_..." she scoffs, "Ha! Uncoolest thing there is."

"Can't be uncool. It's jazz, it's..."

"It's pain and glory and otherness and hot and cool and cruel and tender and life and death and sex and all!" she explodes. "You've told me a million times!"

_And love and want and need and yearn_ , he thinks, wrily. _And I want and need and yearn to put my mouth to your secret mouth and blow eternal music in you. And maybe this is love and maybe it's hollowness and being monsters, but, whatever it is, it's why I can't be still._

He's may things, but never a moral coward. He knows himself, then and now, shinigami and monster, and faces it every single moment.

_Being a gentleman_ , he thinks - and the gibbering malicious part of him wishes she could hear - _I fuck the air instead of you as, being a monster, I'd love to do. See? Lovely lyrics for a lovely song, would you play it with me, baby baby babe? Wou_ -

WHACK!

"OW!"

"Wake up, baldy!" she yells in his ear.

"That hurt," he moans.

"Good. What were you..." she stops, shrugs and goes on, "Oh, who cares? Want to play another one?"

"Yeah," he says, cool regained, and picks up his sax.

And this too is a sort of happiness

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a challenge. The following is my note for the comm:
> 
> "I didn't want to do it, really, because I rather love Shinji, but then I love music so much more and hung my feeble hook on it. I don't think it works, or better, I don't think I'm good enough to make it work as it should, but I like the concept of it and it's a friendly contest and all that jazz so... here it is. May you have mercy upon me."
> 
> I stand by these words.


End file.
